minerals: ​Vital but elusive

Minerals: Vital but Elusive The next few articles will look at minerals, vital for life, and how to best meet your daily requirements. Supplements may be the element by itself, or complexed with another mineral, or in an ionic, colloidal, or chelated form. What is the best form for minerals for the body to be able to use them effectively? Let’s find out….

We were formed from the dust of the earth, and we will return (eventually, in spite of the morticians’ efforts) to the earth. In between, our lives depend on the earth. From the earth, the soil that is that mixture of minerals and organic matter teeming with living organisms, grow the plants that remove carbon dioxide from the air and give us oxygen in return. Using sunlight, they transform energy gas matter, depositing carbon in their bodies and eventually into the earth. They draw needed minerals from the earth and utilize them to create their seed. And their fruit and flesh is the food for all of us, whether herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores.

When it comes to the minerals needed by man, they are readily available in the rocks that abound on the surface of our planet. Although “natural,” these minerals are useless except for plants and industrial uses. Plants are able to take these minerals in through their root system and break them down into usable nutrition. Humans have no means to make minerals from the earth usable (the exception is sodium chloride, sea salt). With our industrialized farming hastening the depletion of minerals in the soil, and our processing of foods removing much of the nutrition, including minerals, we are looking at supplements more often. What are we getting there?

Look at the ingredients of your favorite multivitamin, or any supplement using minerals, and read the contents label. This list of minerals is from the One A Day® Women’s from Bayer, the pharmaceutical company, once part of I. G. Farben, the economic powerhouse that fueled Hitler's Third Reich (note that only one ingredient is poisonous and one 100% unusable): Calcium Carbonate, Ferrous Fumarate; Chromium Chloride, Cupric Oxide, Magnesium Oxide, Manganese Sulfate, Potassium Iodide, Silicon Dioxide, Sodium Selenite, Titanium Dioxide (color), Zinc Oxide (vitamins, 3 FD&C dyes, and several miscellaneous chemicals were removed from the list).

There is quite a difference in the mineral content of these two supplements, and the names of the chemicals actually used are not in our daily vocabulary. All of the Bayer minerals and several of the Earth & Sea minerals are compounds, the mineral chemically bound to another substance, forming a mineral salt. These mineral salts often have industrial applications and become inexpensive sources in multivitamins. Let’s look at some of these “minerals.”​From the Bayer multivitamin:Calcium carbonate: also known as limestone or chalk;Ferrous fumarate: the iron salt of fumaric acid (iron sits heavy on the stomach because so little can be absorbed and the body must remove the heavy waste);Chromium chloride: also used as a corrosion inhibitor and waterproofing agent (a better choice will be shown later);Cupric oxide: NOT to be used as a copper supplement because it is unavailable for absorption by the gut (per The Journal of Nutrition);Magnesium Oxide: Magnesium carbonate (rock or powder known as magnesite) heated until it decomposes; conflicting evidence on bioavailability, but good antacid or for relieving constipation!);Manganese sulfate: manganese oxide + sulfuric acid is an industrial chemical used in dyeing and varnish production;Potassium Iodide: highly absorbable source of iodine;Silicon Dioxide: used as an anti-caking agent;Sodium Selenite: Inexpensive, it was the murder weapon (i.e., poison) in CSI season 2 episode 11; more info here;Titanium Dioxide: used for color (really!); Zinc oxide: mixed results on bioavailability of this inorganic form of zinc.

From the Earth & Sea multivitamin: Calcium ascorbate: calcium carbonate (limestone/chalk) processed with ascorbic acid (“Vitamin C,” a part of the Vitamin C complex) for use as a non-food supplement; Ferrous bisglycinate chelate: chelated salt of glycine (conflicting views of effectiveness); Iodine (kelp): food source contains co-factors and is highest bioavailability; becuse the label lists exactly 150mcg, the iodine must have been extracted from the kelp; Magnesium citrate, malate, succinate, etc.: a variety of magnesium complexes, with different bioavailabilities based on individual conditions, gives the body a choice of magnesium sources but unclear how much an individual will absorb;Zinc picolinate: chelated form of zinc, mixed reviews, but generally good.

The point of all this is to see that what is put in multivitamins may be helpful, but is often not a viable mineral supplement, or that it may have only modest absorption, and that it may even be harmful. One mineral separated from its normal environment (the food that we eat) is missing many cofactors that influence both availability and usage. The next article will focus more on the types of supplement forms: mineral, compound, ionic, colloidal, and chelate.